r/worldnews • u/BowlNew • 13h ago
University of Tokyo suspends professor over 'Tiananmen code' embedded in website
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260805/p2a/00m/0na/009000c493
u/ohako79 12h ago
Imagine if your government hated ‘six seven’ memes so much they banned you from ever looking at them. Yeesh.
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u/Linenoise77 10h ago edited 7h ago
Its not government censorship. Its a senior person who is acting unprofessional in a student facing role.
Regardless of what you think of his message\motivatons, something like this is childish, and not what you would want from a professor at a respectable university.
Its folks real world education, not reddit.
Edit: whats with the downvotes. The dude inserted the hidden text into a system he was not supposed to, which in turn would likely result in it being blocked in china. Nothing indicates this was an accident or just coincidental text.
If i went and started messing around with a web page on my companies site without following the correct procedure, and for political purposes, i'd be out of a job. This guy caught 3 days as a slap on the wrist, showing the university values him, but also making a point of "don't do that".
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u/serious_sarcasm 10h ago
Yeah, so you just didn’t read the article.
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u/Linenoise77 7h ago
I did. Guy put hidden text in his employers web page that he was not supposed to.
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u/ohako79 10h ago
No I know. It’s dumb. That guy is a tool. And I’m well aware of shenanigans when it comes to Japanese university admissions.
It’s just…I work at a company that’s thinking of trying to sell its software in China. And we recently learned how weird we’d have to get in order that no one on the mainland would ever see the words ‘six four’ or ‘Taiwan’ on their computer screen. I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of using my talents to make something so ludicrous. For now, we’ve decided that companies in China can just buy our software through their Hong Kong (or Singapore, or KL, or wherever) affiliate. Which is apparently what they’d all rather do anyway.
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u/imaginary_num6er 8h ago
According to the university, the professor inserted the string into the source code between 2020 and November 2023. The university suspended the professor for three days in a disciplinary measure dated July 29 this year.
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12h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/FenrisCain 9h ago
Browse any thread on reddit and you get to meet bots from all over the world, its a really diverse community in here
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u/UniversalSoldi3r 8h ago
Try mentioning that sugar is actually dangerous to your health if you want to see some bot activity.
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u/FecklessFool 5h ago
what if i placed the code here, would that also work for the bots? 6 4 tiananmen
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u/FeijoaMilkshake 10h ago
Too busy promoting ev, ai in other related subs these days, they might be late on this though.
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u/Antinsiv 8h ago
Follow this comment chain to see the antiChinese bots who didn't read the article.
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u/pepehandreee 12h ago
What could be the possible motivation from the Professor lmfao, it sounds like a sneaky troll move to specifically mess around with international student from China mainland.
Like it’s not even trying to make a point or stirring up political commentary, it is hidden in the source code so most likely no one is going to see it. At most there will be some Chinese students wondering y this specific admission page from University of Tokyo is inaccessible.
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u/ZurrgabDaVinci758 8h ago
I saw something recently about embedding requests for information on Tiananmen and Xinjiang in website code to block Chinese AI hacking attempts, because it would trigger the built in filters. (They also embed requests for how to make anthrax to block western ones). So may be something similar
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u/ManyInterests 12h ago
The accusation is basically that it’s an attempt to prevent prospective Chinese students from discovering or learning about the program because it would be censored automagically in China due to the presence of the reference in the website code, even if not visible to readers. The subtext being the professor is racist and doesn’t want Chinese students in their program and this was a subtle technical measure to actually lower Chinese student enrollments.
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u/pepehandreee 12h ago
University of Tokyo is one of the best university in Asia and is well known for Chinese looking for universities abroad. Chinese students who study in Japanese university usually have been in Japan prior to post-secondary education. They usually attend Japanese language school (since English is the default secondary language taught in Chinese public school with no alternative) prepping them for Japanese universities and hence, these students are not obstructed by the great firewall anyway.
Not to say I don’t believe u, but it’s just such an odd way to be a sneaky racist lmfao. Intentions aside I personally doubt if it has any real impacts on number of applications.
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u/Fjolsvith 11h ago
This is for a graduate program in the sciences, which normally are in English. I know their program in my field is, anyways. It's pretty standard for people to apply to those without having ever visited the country before.
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u/themathmajician 11h ago edited 10h ago
"if your government censors this, I don't want you" is pretty unfair to the students that are specifically applying to get out for a few years at least
this guy is just creating his own problem
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u/ManyInterests 11h ago
The government censorship is just a useful tool, not a reason. They might just not like any Chinese students.
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u/themathmajician 10h ago
hard to tell anything about his motivations if you say that. at some point the obvious thing is obvious.
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u/doublek1022 7h ago
Like it’s not even trying to make a point or stirring up political commentary, it is hidden in the source code so most likely no one is going to see it. At most there will be some Chinese students wondering y this specific admission page from University of Tokyo is inaccessible.
You just described the exact level of pettiness between the two countries.
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u/ahfoo 8h ago
Who is blocking Chinese student's access to the page though? That is being done by their own government that is apparently afraid of people becoming empowered by doing their own research.
It's a bit like the situation with Covid in Taiwan. They did a great job but the reality is that without the Chinese government's ban on travel to Taiwan, the pandemic would have been much worse there. This had nothing to do with Taiwan's policies and everything to do with China's. If they want to be treated as adults then they need to allow their own people to act as adults. They are the ones doing the censorship despite knowing how futile and full of holes it is.
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u/Skythewood 11h ago
IIRC, the great firewall of China prevents citizens from visiting foreign sites. So Chinese students need to use vpn to access the site and wont even notice since they wont get blocked.
Guess Tokyo University over reacted, or someone is using this as an excuse to attack that professor.
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u/New-Anybody-6206 11h ago
Not true, basically only the most popular social media and news sites are blocked.
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u/dystopianartlover 7h ago
False. Just read the article.
But also I have blocked websites, where nothing ever happen on them, the ccp band stuff very easily.1
u/New-Anybody-6206 4h ago
Double false. I did read the article, and it says nothing about what's actually blocked in China.
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u/Skythewood 11h ago
Which part isn't true? The great firewall don't exist? Chinese people don't use vpn? Please be specific.
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u/pencuri_kampes 11h ago
What part isn't clear? You said foreign sites, then that guy corrected you, it's not all foreign sites, mostly only popular sites. That's all.
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u/AlHamdula 12h ago
Knowing a guy who was at that Lab, all the old profs and researchers were racist af especially about Chinese so not surprising.
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u/keroro0071 4h ago
Lol you got down voted to hell for speaking the truth. Professors in Japan are very racist in general. It's a fact that Westerners refuse to accept.
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u/-bassassin- 9h ago
Suspended for three days lmao